Necropolis (2 page)

The van shot past, missing her by inches. She actually felt the warm breeze slap her face and smelled the petrol fumes. There had been two books in her hand: a French dictionary and a math notebook… an hour and a half's homework for the evening ahead. As she was carried forward, her hand and arm jerked, out of control, and the books were hurled into the air, landing on the road and sliding across the tarmac as if she had deliberately thrown them away. Scarlett followed them. With the man still grabbing hold of her, she came crashing down. There was a moment of sharp pain as she hit the ground and all the skin was taken off one knee. Behind her, there was the screech of tires, a blast of a horn, and then the ominous sound of metal hitting metal. A car alarm went off. Scarlett lay still.

For what felt like a whole minute, nobody did anything. It was as if someone had taken a photograph and framed it with a sign reading accident in dulwich

. Then Scarlett sat up and twisted round. The man who had saved her was lying stretched out in the road, and she was only aware that he was Chinese, in his twenties, with black hair, and that he was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting jacket. She looked past him. The white van had swerved round a traffic island, mounted the sidewalk, and smashed into a car parked in front of the primary school. It was this car's alarm that had gone off. The driver of the van was slumped over the wheel, his head covered in broken glass.

Scarlett turned back. A crowd had already formed — perhaps it had been there from the start — and people were hurrying toward her, rushing past Aidan, who seemed to be rooted to the spot. He was shaking his head as if denying that he had been to blame. There were twenty or thirty schoolkids, some of them already taking photographs with their mobile phones. A policeman had appeared so quickly that he could have popped out of a trapdoor in the pavement. He was the first to reach her.

"Are you all right? Don't try to move…"

Scarlett ignored him. She put out a hand for support and eased herself back onto her feet. Her knee was on fire and her shoulder felt as if it had been beaten with an iron club, but she was already fairly sure that she hadn't been seriously hurt.

She looked at Aidan, then at the white van. A few people were already helping the driver out, laying him on the sidewalk. Steam was rising out of the crumpled hood. Next to her, the policeman was speaking urgently into his shoulder mike, doing all the stuff with Delta Bravo Oscar Charlie, summoning help.

Finally, Aidan made it over to her. "Scarl…?" That was his name for her. "Are you okay?"

She nodded, suddenly tearful without knowing why. Maybe it was just the shock, the knowledge of what could have been. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, noticing that her nails were grimy and all her knuckles were grazed. Her dress was torn. She realized she must look like a total wreck.

'You were nearly killed…!" Why was Aidan telling her that? She had more or less worked it out for herself.

Even so, his words reminded her of the man who had saved her. She looked down and was surprised to see that he was no longer there. For a moment she thought that it was a conjuring trick, that he had simply vanished into thin air. Then she saw him, already on the far side of the road — the side that she had been heading toward — hurrying past the shops. He reached a hair salon on the corner, where a woman with hair that was too blond to be true had just come out. He pushed past her and then he was gone.

Why? He hadn't even stayed long enough to be thanked.

After that, things unraveled more slowly. An ambulance arrived, and although Scarlett didn't need it, the van driver had to be put on a stretcher and carried away. Scarlett herself was examined but nothing was broken, and in the end she was allowed to go home. Aidan went with her. An officer accompanied them both. Scarlett wondered how that would go down with Mrs. Murdoch. Somehow she knew it wasn't going to mean laughter and backslapping at bedtime.

In fact, the accident had several consequences.

Paul and Vanessa Adams were told what had happened when they got home that night, and as soon as they had got over the shock, the knowledge of how close they had come to losing their only child, they began to argue about whose fault it was: their own for allowing Scarlett too much freedom, Aidan's for distracting her, or Scarlett's for showing so little road sense, even at the age of thirteen. In the end, they decided that in the future, Mrs. Murdoch would take up her old position at the school gates. It would be another nine months before Scarlett was allowed to walk home on her own again.

The identity of the man who had saved her remained a mystery. Where had he come from? How had he seen what was about to happen? Why had he been in such a hurry to get away? Mrs. Murdoch decided that he must be an illegal immigrant, that he had taken off at the sight of the approaching policeman. For her part, Scarlett was just sorry that she hadn't been able to thank him. And if he was in some sort of trouble, she would have liked to have helped him.

That was the night she had her first dream.

Scarlett had never been one for vivid dreams. Normally she got home, ate, did her homework, spent forty minutes on her PlayStation, and then plunged into a deep, empty sleep that would be ended all too quickly by Mrs. Murdoch shaking her awake for the start of another school day. But this dream was more than vivid. It was so realistic, so detailed, that it was almost like being inside a film. And there was something else that was strange about it. As far as she could see, it had no connection to her life or to anything that had happened during the day.

She dreamed that she was in a gray-lit world that might be another planet…the moon perhaps. In the distance, she could see a vast ocean stretching out to the horizon and beyond — but there were no waves. The surface of the water could have been a single sheet of metal. Everything was dead. She was surrounded by sand dunes — at least, that was what she thought they were, but they were actually made of dust. They had somehow blown there and — like the dust on the moon — it would stay the same forever. She walked forward. But she left no footprints.

There were four boys standing together, a short distance away.

The boys were searching for her. If she listened carefully, she could actually hear them calling her name.

She tried to call back; but although there was no wind, not even a breeze, something snatched the words away.

The boys weren't real. They couldn't be…Scarlett had never seen them before. And yet, somehow, she was sure that she knew their names.

Scott. Jamie. Pedro. And Matt.

She knew them from somewhere. They had met before.

That was the first time, but over the next two years, she had the same dream again and again. And gradually, it began to change. It seemed to her that every time she saw the boys, they were a little farther away, until finally she had to get used to the fact that she was completely on her own. Every time she went to sleep, she found herself hoping she would see them. More than that. She needed to meet them.

She never spoke about her dreams, not even to Aidan. But somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that finding the four boys had become the single most important thing in her life.

TWO

The Door

Two years later, Scarlett had turned fifteen — and she had become an orphan for a second time.

Paul and Vanessa Adams hadn't died, but their marriage had, one inch at a time. In a way, it was amazing they had stayed together so long. Scarlett's father had just started a new job, working for a multinational corporation based in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, her mother was spending more and more time with her own business, looking after customers who seemed to demand her attention twenty-four hours a day. They were seeing less and less of each other and suddenly realized that they preferred it that way. They didn't argue or shout at each other. They just decided they would be happier apart.

They told Scarlett the news at the end of the summer holidays and, for her part, she wasn't quite sure what to feel. But the truth was that in the short term it would make little difference to her life. Most of the time she was on her own with Mrs. Murdoch anyway, and although she'd always been glad to see her parents, she'd gotten used to the fact that they were seldom, if ever, around. The three of them had one last meeting in the kitchen, the two adults sitting with grim faces and large glasses of wine.

''Your mother is going to set up a company in Melbourne, in Australia," Paul said. "She has to go where the market is, and Melbourne is a wonderful opportunity." He glanced at Vanessa, and in that moment, Scarlett knew that he wasn't telling the whole truth. Maybe the Australians were desperate for exotic holidays. But the fact was that she had chosen somewhere as far away as possible. Maybe she had met someone else. Whatever the reason, she wanted to carve herself a whole new life. "As for me, Nightrise has asked me to move to the Hong Kong office…"

The Nightrise Corporation. That was the company that employed her dad.

"I know this is very difficult for you, Scarly," he went on. "Two such huge changes. But we both want to look after you. You can come with either of us."

In fact, it wasn't difficult for Scarlett. She had already thought about it and made up her mind. "Why can't I stay here?" she asked.

"On your own?"

"Mrs. Murdoch will look after me. You're not going to sell the house, are you? This is my home!

Anyway, I don't want to leave St. Genevieve's. And all my friends are here…"

Of course, both her parents protested. They wanted Scarlett to come with them. How could she possibly manage without them? But all of them knew that it was actually the best, the easiest solution. Mrs.

Murdoch had been with the family for ten years and probably knew Scarlett as well as anyone. In a way, they couldn't have been happier if they had suggested it themselves. It might not be conventional, but it was clearly for the best.

And so it was agreed. A few weeks later, Vanessa left, hugging Scarlett and promising that the two of them would see each other again very soon. And yet, somehow, Scarlett wondered just how likely that would be. She had always tried to be close to Vanessa, recognizing at the same time that they had almost nothing in common. They weren't a real mother and daughter and so — as far as Scarlett was concerned

— this wasn't a real divorce.

Paul Adams left for Hong Kong shortly afterward, and suddenly Scarlett found herself in a new phase of life, virtually on her own. But, as she had expected, it wasn't so very different from what she had always been used to. Mrs. Murdoch was still there, cooking, cleaning, and making sure she was ready for school. Her father telephoned her regularly to check up on her. Vanessa sent long e-mails. Her teachers

— who had been warned what had happened — kept a close eye on her. She was surprised how quickly she got used to things.

She was happy. She had plenty of friends, and Aidan was still around. The two of them saw more of each other than ever, going shopping together, listening to music, taking Aidan's dog — a black retriever

— out on Dulwich Common. She was allowed to walk home from school on her own again. In fact, as if to recognize her new status, she found herself being given a whole lot more freedom. On weekends, she went into town to the cinema. She stayed overnight with other girls from her class. She had been given a big part in the Christmas play, which meant late afternoon rehearsals and hours in the evening learning her lines. It all helped to fill the time and to make her think that her life wasn't so very unusual after all.

Everything changed one day in November. That was when Miss Chaplin announced her great Blitz project — a visit to London's East End.

Joan Chaplin was the art teacher at St. Genevieve's, and she was famous for being younger, friendlier, and more easygoing than any of the dinosaurs in the staff room. She was always finding new ways to interest the girls, organizing field trips to exhibitions and events all over London. One class had gone to see the giant crack built into the floor of the Tate Modern. For another it had been a shark suspended in a tank, an installation by the artist Damien Hirst. Weeks later, they had still been arguing whether it was serious art or just a dead fish.

As part of their history coursework, a lot of the girls were studying the Blitz, the bombing of London by the Germans during the Second World War. Miss Chaplin had decided that they should take an artistic as well as a historical interest in what had happened.

"I want you to capture the spirit of the Blitz," she explained. "What's the point of studying it if you don't feel it too?" She paused as if waiting for someone to argue, then went on. "You can use photography, painting, collage, or even clay modeling if you like. But I want you to give me an idea of what it might have been like to live in London during the winter of 1940."

There was a mutter of agreement around the class. Walking around London had to be more fun than reading about it in books. Scarlett was particularly pleased. History and art had become two of her favorite subjects, and she saw that here was an opportunity to do them both at the same time.

"Next Monday, we're going to Shoreditch," Miss Chaplin went on. "It was an area of London that was very heavily bombed. We'll visit many of the streets, trying to imagine what it was like, and we'll look at some of the buildings that survived."

She glanced outside. The art room was on the ground floor, at the back of the school, with a view over the garden, sloping down with flower beds at the bottom and three tennis courts beyond. It was Friday and it was raining. The rain was sheeting down and the grass was sodden. It had been like that for three days.

"Of course," she went on, "the trip won't be possible if the weather doesn't cheer up — and I have to warn you that the forecast hasn't been too promising. But maybe we'll be lucky. Either way, remember to bring a permission slip from your parents." Then she had a sudden thought and smiled. "What do you think, Scarlett?"

It had become a sort of joke at St. Genevieve's.